$100bn

South Africa’s cli­mate change road map, sub­mit­ted in Paris, stated that the coun­try would not be able to achieve our in­tended tar­gets if we did not re­ceive some fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance. The South African del­e­ga­tion was also in­censed by pro­pos­als that cli­mate change fund­ing should be lim­ited to the least de­vel­oped coun­tries only.

En­vi­ron­men­tal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Edna Molewa said South Africa needed fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to help the coun­try move to a low-car­bon econ­omy.

“We are a de­vel­op­ing na­tion, and we need the funds to switch,” she said. “We, as South Africa, are quite in­sis­tent that rich coun­tries should come to the party with fi­nanc­ing.”

How much money na­tions need is still un­clear. Even South Africa’s fi­nan­cial need is quite vague. A large part of the ne­go­ti­a­tions this year, and prob­a­bly next year, will be to iron out a mech­a­nism to de­ter­mine what will be needed and how to mea­sure what is be­ing do­nated.

At the Copen­hagen talks in 2009, rich na­tions com­mit­ted them­selves to giv­ing $100 bil­lion to the fund by 2020.

“But we know that is not nearly enough,” said Rashmi Mistry, cli­mate change ad­viser at Ox­fam SA. “What we need go­ing for­ward is the money to be scaled up.”